


The Seventh Commandment: reversed

by Kitty Seeboo (KittySeeboo)



Series: Hide Week 2017 [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: 24th Ward Hide, Ass-Kicking!Eto, Canon-Typical Violence, Day three – 英 hero / wisdom, Day two – 近 near / similar, Eto gets a hungry Hide food, Eto is a brilliant actress, Gen, Hide Week 2017, Horror, How Hide met Eto and became the witch's servant, One-Eyed Ghoul Hide, Supernatural - Freeform, it's so much more satisfying to see Eto fight, now there's one less perv in the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 10:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittySeeboo/pseuds/Kitty%20Seeboo
Summary: Seven commandments form the foundation of the 24th Ward. They are:One: The food you find is yours to eat.Two: The food another finds is theirs to eat.Three: You must eat immediately, or the food is not yours.Four: If you do not want to be food, fight.Five: If you win, you can eat them.Six: If you lose, they will eat you.Seven: If you steal someone’s food, you will be eaten.OrHide fled the 24th Ward and was blood-soaked when he first met Eto.





	The Seventh Commandment: reversed

**Author's Note:**

> Reupload for Hide Week 2017 Days 2 & 3! Honestly, I'd been a little uncomfortable with how passive Eto had been in the situation, whether she was 12 or not, and I could see her getting really angry from earlier on enough to retaliate. 
> 
> Anyway! I've always been intrigued by Eto's and Hide's interaction back in the original TG, and I sometimes speculate on how they could have met and - BOOM! This is what I came up with.
> 
> I did my best to stay as true to what we've seen about the 24th Ward as possible with respect to how they speak, and I designed the commandments for the ward based on how the three Ghouls that Ayato met behaved.
> 
> And finally, yes, the title is a very obvious reference to the Seventh Commandment in Catholicism: "Thou shalt not steal." I'm also referencing the fact that Hide's chapter in Tokyo Ghoul: Days is named "Bible". It's also a reference to the seventh Tarot card: The Chariot (hence the reversed part).
> 
> Reversed, the Chariot signifies: lack of control and direction, and aggression. It also means to stop clinging to unrewarding idea/habits/people etc. Something which will be made obvious as you read what Hide is actually clinging to when he leaves the 24th Ward (Tokyo, as he'd call it).
> 
> Hope you all enjoy, especially OEG!Hide and the brilliant actress and ass-kicker, Eto! Leave a comment and a kudos if you do :)
> 
> If anything is unclear, do tell me, and I'll answer you.

_Hurtinger._

Hide hadn’t eaten in days. Not since an angry man of fearsome size threw him out of a food supply point for eating the long, yellow food. The outside tasted bitter and chewed like rubber, but the inside bore a mushy sweetness that he greatly enjoyed. He’d only gotten to eat two before the man grabbed him by his hair and dragged him out.

“Stupid, thieving brat! Do you think bananas pay for themselves?” he barked in a strange dialect that sounded too clean and proper for his anger. Better suited for his father’s unwavering calm.

Hide struggled to escape, as surely a man could only grow that large because he had eaten every child he caught. Hide, a boy who’d turned seven only recently, believed the child-eater intended to make him his next meal. “Le’go meh! Yerra gunna etted meh!”

The child-eater faltered briefly and gave Hide a disgruntled look, almost like he hadn’t understood a word Hide said, and the red blotches on his neck and face deepened. “What did you just say?”

“Le’go meh!”

The child-eater wrenched him forward – nearly ripping out his hair – and threw him out. “The hell are they teaching you damn kids these days? Don’t come back!” 

Terrified of the child-eater, Hide scrambled to his feet and ran off. 

Hide quickly learned that “Fineders-Keepingers” didn’t apply in this world, though it laid the groundwork for Tokyo.

 

**One: The food you find is yours to eat.**

**Two: The food another finds is theirs to eat.**

**Three: You must eat immediately, or the food is not yours.**

**Four: If you do not want to be food, fight.**

**Five: If you win, you can eat them.**

**Six: If you lose, they will eat you.**

**Seven: If you steal someone’s food, you will be eaten.**

 

Instead, the native folk traded gross-smelling paper for food. That was what the large man (who Hide never witnessed eat a single child) meant by “pay”. But Hide did not know where to get the gross-smelling paper, which meant he couldn’t get food. Everyone looked much too strong to win against in his starved state; he would surely be eaten.

_Stilis hurtinger!_ Hide shut his eyes and dropped to his knees and doubled over when the burning attacked his stomach again, like he’d eaten the bright circle of hot light that he heard several people refer to as the sun.

He cracked one eye open and strained to glimpse his surroundings, hoping to spot something edible. Even an ant or a worm would suffice at this point. He had collapsed in an alley narrow enough to trap the large, angry man between its brick walls. Twin metal pipes ran parallel up one of the walls before disappearing into it, and nearly midway down the same one had a wide gap.

_A slipeded-tru._ Most slipeded-trus he’d seen before were far smaller, as usually little ones used them to escape from being eaten. Maybe there were smaller slipeded-trus within, so he could hide if ever he became the target of someone’s ravenous hunger. 

He struggled to stand, using the brick wall to steady himself, but another painful pang brought him to his knees once more. He clutched his belly and closed his eyes. Pressing his forehead to the cold, rough ground, he willed the pain to pass.

* * *

Hide blinked awake to a shrill scream and a dark world, and Hide feared for a moment that he’d been dragged back to Tokyo as someone’s meal. But he looked up and saw only the softer sun among endless white dots in the vast blackness above, and he knew he was still safe.

And the hellish pain chewing at his insides told him he was still starving.

**Clack! Clack! Clack!** His head snapped towards the corner, eyes locked there as he scrambled back, slipping a few times before finally getting to his feet. Deep dread churned against his hunger as he heard the clack-clack’s swift and imminent approach, but Hide hadn’t realized how close it truly was until a scream of “Please! Someone, help me!” echoed throughout the empty alley, and he bolted for the slipeded-tru.

He recognized that scream. That was the fearful scream of someone faced with the certainty of being devoured. And whatever was hunting the clack-clack, would surely hunt Hide next.

Something burst into the alleyway, howling for help, just as Hide ran into the slipeded-tru and smacked into a locked metal door. In this world, they made gaps that mimicked slipeded-trus to trick the hunted into trying to escape through them, only to be trapped and eaten in the end. And Hide had just fallen for their trap.

**Clack! Clack! Clack!** Hide backed into the shadows of the right corner and flattened his back against the wall and covered his mouth and nose using both hands. He even tiptoed to make sure the shadows shrouded every inch of him so as to avoid detection.

A girl, just barely older than him, flew past on black, pointy shoes with tall, thin sticks glued beneath them that clacked with every step. If she wanted to survive, then she needed to kick the clack-clack shoes off immediately. She barely got past the slipeded-tru trap when a large, hooded man grabbed her short hair and yanked her back before slamming her against the wall opposite from where Hide hid.

The etteder – his label for those who hunted and bested their prey – muffled her shriek with his hand, and hissed, “Shut up, bitch!” Then he kneed her in the stomach and she choked and slumped forward, but he caught her. “You little whores are all so noisy.”

Hide knew she’d spotted him, he saw it in her green eyes and the hint of her strange smile, and he nearly took off, believing that she would sell him out to save herself, but she didn’t. Instead, she struggled weakly, as though trying to keep the etteder’s focus on her. 

“You like wiggling, honey? Don’t worry.” The etteder yanked the girl up and roughly gripped her chin. Hide feared that he would rip her jaw clean off. Then the etteder pressed his lips to her ear and whispered something Hide didn’t hear. Whatever he did say caused the girl to start slapping and biting, doing what she could to escape.

She knocked his hood back; that was about all the power she had compared to that terrifyingly strong etteder, and Hide got a proper look at him: bald, a set of crooked teeth set in a malicious grin, cruel eyes fixed solely upon his prey.

“Yeah, girl! Got some fight in you, huh?” With barely an ounce an effort, he seized her hair once more and wrenched her into a bow. “Come on, baby, wiggle for me!” Did this etteder mistake her for a giant worm because she was so scrawny?

She stopped moving, and he tore at her roots, urging her on, and she latched on to his hand and bawled, “LET GO!”

“Shut up and learn your place, little bitch! You do what I say, when I say!” With one hand, he swung her into the concrete wall, and she fell to the ground, unmoving.

Hide never encountered an etteder as heinous as this one, in both actions and appearance. When the etteder crouched over the girl – his back to Hide – he had the perfect opportunity to escape from being the next meal. He wouldn’t be caught if he crept along the wall until he could safely dash around the corner and quickly find another hiding spot. 

He inched towards the edge of the wall, but froze once more, pressing his hands harder against his mouth and nose when the etteder abruptly shifted towards her legs and rolled her unto her back so he could spread them and push up her skirt.

Her legs twitched. 

Instead of fiddling with her sunny panties, though, the man grabbed her small breasts, kneading them roughly through her shirt. “I like ‘em small.” His voice sounded heavy and perverse. “You know they’re real… What you got here, honey?” He dipped his fingers into a small pocket over her left breast, and pulled out what Hide recognized as the gross-smelling paper that people here traded for food. The etteder held it to his nose and inhaled deeply, and Hide fought back a gag. How sick could someone get? “Personally, I’d just hide mine in my shoe. To each their own.” He slipped the paper into his back pocket.

He then realized that the etteder wasn’t checking which part to eat first. He had no intention of making this girl his food. Despite his strength, he was content with stooping to a low level of shameful cowardice: stealing her means of trade.

Hide watched him hook her legs over his shoulders and slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her panties. “Let’s see what’s in your sweet, little purse, huh, honey?”

Then she let out a loud, exasperated sigh and fixed her gaze where Hide hid. “Will ya hurry up?” Hide’s jaw slackened. “I know yar hungry. Ya know what Gauners get.” This girl spoke a very bizarre mix of Tokyo’s dialect and the dialect of this – his father’s – world.

In Tokyo, a place of seven commandments and scarce food, any etteder who stole earned the indelible title: _Gauner._  

“…hell? Who’re you talking to?” He shoved her away, and she just brushed her skirt down and leaned back on her elbows, as though she’d gotten the perfect chance to just lounge and enjoy watching the Gauner devour Hide first.

“Ya gonna let ya-self get eaten?” Her words held a teasing edge.

“Wha…? Who the fuck’s over there?” In mere steps the Gauner loomed over him, barking vulgar threats as his large hand shot towards Hide. Before he could even touch him, the arm was gone. It took a little for the Gauner to understand why he hadn’t snapped Hide’s neck by now, but when he did, Hide had to cover his ears at his tortured bellow.

“What the fuck!” Words repeated until they were nothing but scrambled sobs, and Hide dropped his hands and looked at the girl as she munched on the meat of the arm she’d ripped off. 

“The blood taste better, yeah.” Then she fixed her glare on him, as though she wished to damn him to eternal starvation. “If ya don’t eat him, I’m gonna eat ya. Don’t ya know ya commandments?”

And Hide could taste the sweetness coating the air, and he salivated.

Hide saw when she moved this time, spinning into a kick that snapped his leg like a twig, and she twisted the sharp stick at her heel deep inside and ripped out flesh and bone alike. And the screaming Gauner barreled to the ground. The bloodied bone pierced through the juicy flesh of his calf, enticing him to tear the flesh right off of it. Until the air could never be rid of his saccharine blood.

“Eat.”

The burning surge of Hellfire he called hunger hit, but it did not knock Hide down this time, becoming instead a ravenous drive to devour the Gauner. He needed to eat, and that Gauner deserved to be his food.

He let his hunger manifest in his right eye: his sclera became like the vast blackness above and his iris the color of blood.

Hide surged forth and crashed on top of him. He yanked at the Gauner’s broken leg and he tore through the cloth of his pants and into his calf. His flesh left a disgusting, greasy aftertaste on his tongue, but his blood – warm and syrupy – compensated for it.

An immediate delirium became him, filling his mouth with sugar and urging him to devour the sweet heaven at hand, lest his every organ be scorched by the fiery pangs. And Hide bit again, ripping off the unappealing skin before tearing into the muscles.

The shock of Hide’s retaliation ended with his agonized scream, and the Gauner drove his fist repeatedly into Hide’s head, desperately trying to knock him away. To stop to horror of being eaten alive. “Fucking let go! Little, fucking psycho! LET GO!” he echoed the girl’s words, but his fear was real, and his voice cracked as his words devolved into swearing.

When Hide caught him by the fingers and ripped two of them off, he got a good look at the Gauner’s face.

Popping eyes no longer filled with cruel glee, but a disbelieving fear that he’d been caught committing theft. Drool and snot dribbling down his mouth – that knew how to beg through the torment for his own life – to his chin – weaker than a squirming worm beneath his foot – that left his neck perfectly exposed. And Hide itched to rip his throat out.

Hide bared his bloodied teeth and sprang for his neck, but missed when the Gauner frantically scrambled and fell flat on his back. Switching targets, Hide sunk his teeth into the Gauner’s side, tearing out a chunk of flesh and cloth.

He felt so powerful to make this sadistic man scream. Because he was so much larger and looked strong, yet the Gauner had not even an ounce of skill. So pathetic that he had to steal from a little girl; that he could not even release his weapon, his wormy bugger, to defend against a mere child of seven; that Hide did not need to release his own wormy bugger to beat his prey. But it scratched beneath his skin, overzealous to burst forth and impale his prey through his yapping mouth.

A bellow of pure suffering bled past his lips. “Y-You’re a Ghoul! You fuckers exist?” he cried in a voice like breaking glass.

“Wassa ‘Ghoul’?” A grin graced his lips, and he felt some sweet droplets trickle down. Its pure fragrance dizzied yet grounded him, and a single word repeating in a song of primal need commanded him: _etted_. Hide licked at the slick residues. “Imma human.” His wormy bugger eagerly unsheathed and launched straight into the man’s mouth and popped out the back of his head coated in squishy chunks. Then it crumbled away, piece by tiny piece that charred the concrete like drops of molten sun.

Hide went for his throat. The flesh there bore a fragile bitterness that felt good to bite into and drink from the perfumed streams – still warm with the remnants of red life – that gushed forth, and Hide – the victor, the strongest etteder – allowed himself to drown in their pleasures.

He ate greedily and messily, uncaring that he bathed in blood so thoroughly that he bore semblance to a newborn, uncaring that it splashed and smeared everything near. Savoring each mouthful until but a string linked the Gauner’s head to his body, until the organs beneath his belly’s tender flesh spilled out for consumption.

Until his sated hunger renewed some coherence, enough to remember that the girl’s wad of paper was in his back pocket. “Hey.” Hide jolted and tightened his hold on the paper, head snapping in her direction. The girl had moved much closer, now lying comfortably on her stomach, propped on her elbow as she regarded him through half-lidded eyes. Then she waved at him, greeting him a languid with a languid smile. “Ya good now?”

Why was she lying there so nonchalantly, looking cozy in the blood splatter as she watched him eat her food? Could it be that she wished to label him a Gauner now?

“Sorry I couldn’t get ya someone better. The good tasters aren’t sick perverts like this one.” She plucked the paper wad from Hide’s hand and tucked it back in her tiny pocket. “I shoulda killed ya for taking so long. Do something nice and ya can’t even say thanks.”

“Tanked yerra.”

The girl looked a little surprised that he made even a peep, but then she winked at him and said, “I should still eat ya, just cuz ya look so good.” Then she laughed, but her tone matched the seriousness of the seven commandments.

Hide made not a sound as he waited for her to speak again, observing the strange girl. Only the roots near the crown of her head were black, while an unnatural hue of shadowy leaves colored the rest. It suited her eyes better than her hair, as they conveyed a sense of malevolent unease far easier.

She suddenly snapped her clack-clack shoes together once, and Hide jumped at the noise. “Ya can always depend on creeps like thisun to get distracted. Hope he didn’t taste too gross.” She wiped the blood off his lips, then sucked her fingers clean. “Not too bad.” Then she stood and twirled around once, making odd movements with her feet, as though modeling the clack-clack shoes for Hide. “Lotsa men like these up here. Lotsa women too. But I think they’re annoying. Too noisy, yeah.”

They were noisy, but also capable of greater agility than Hide could ever have anticipated.

Then she bent, grabbed his hands, and ordered, “Stand up, Hideyoshi.”

Stunned, he let her pull him to his feet. “Yerra no meh?” 

She chuckled at this, and Hide fought the impulse to twist his hands away. “Of course I know ya.” There was something sinister, possessive, in the way she spoke, the way she emphasized that she knew him. As though she’d been gifted a magnificent plaything that she could do anything she wished to. “How could I not know ya?” Her middle and index fingers tickled as they quickly ascended the length of his arm and up his neck and cheek, and Hide wriggled and giggled. “And ya beautiful eye.” She covered his right eye with her palm.

Then she took a small step back and let him go, and covered her right eye. “We are the same.” Slowly, as though for dramatic effect, she removed her hand, and Hide saw her eye become a drop of red in a puddle of swirling blackness; exactly like his. “Call me Eto. It’s a pleasure to meet ya, Hideyoshi.” 

* * *

 

** ©Kitty Seeboo 2017 **

**Author's Note:**

> As stated before, Hide is 7, and Eto is about 12 here. So I do hope I kept their characters true as I could. I'm much more satisfied with this version than I was with the previous, so I'll definitely be keeping this one up!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it! <3


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